Intro
We would like to address some of the points that have been raised by some of our users (and by one of our communities here on Lemmy.World) on /c/vegan regarding a recent post concerning vegan diets for cats. We understand that the vegan community here on Lemmy.World is rightfully upset with what has happened. In the following paragraphs we will do our best to respond to the major points that we’ve gleaned from the threads linked here.
Links
Actions in question
Admin removing comments discussing vegan cat food in a community they did not moderate.
The comments have been restored.
The comments were removed for violating our instance rule against animal abuse (https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/#11-attacks-on-users). Rooki is a cat owner himself and he was convinced that it was scientific consensus that cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. This originally justified the removal.
Even if one of our admins does not agree with what is posted, unless the content violates instance rules it should not be removed. This was the original justification for action.
Removing some moderators of the vegan community
Removed moderators have been reinstated.
This was in the first place a failure of communication. It should have been clearly communicated towards the moderators why a certain action was taken (instance rules) and that the reversal of that action would not be considered (during the original incident).
The correct way forward in this case would have been an appeal to the admin team, which would have been handled by someone other than the admin initially acting on this.
We generally discuss high impact actions among team before acting on them. This should especially be the case when there is no strong urgency on the act performed. Since this was only a moderator removal and not a ban, this should have been discussed among the team prior to action.
Going forward we have agreed, as a team, to discuss such actions first, to help prevent future conflict
Posting their own opposing comment and elevating its visibility
Moderators’ and admins’ comments are flagged with flare, which is okay and by design on Lemmy. But their comments are not forced above the comments of other users for the purpose of arguing a point.
These comments were not elevated to appear before any other users comments.
In addition, Rooki has since revised his comments to be more subjective and less reactive.
Community Responses
The removed comments presented balanced views on vegan cat food, citing scientific research supporting its feasibility if done properly.
Presenting scientifically backed peer reviewed studies is 100% allowed, and encouraged. While we understand anyone can cherry pick studies, if a individual can find a large amount of evidence for their case, then by all accounts they are (in theory) technically correct.
That being said, using facts to bully others is not in good faith either. For example flooding threads with JSTOR links.
The topic is controversial but not clearly prohibited by site rules.
That is correct, at the time there was no violation of site wide rules.
Rooki’s actions appear to prioritize his personal disagreement over following established moderation guidelines.
Please see the above regarding addressing moderator policy.
Conclusions
Regarding moderator actions
We will not be removing Rooki from his position as moderator, as we believe that this is a disproportionate response for a heat-of-the-moment response.
Everybody makes mistakes, and while we do try and hold the site admin staff to a higher standard, calling for folks resignation from volunteer positions over it would not fair to them. Rooki has given up 100’s of hours of his free time to help both Lemmy.World, FHF and the Fediverse as a whole grown in far reaching ways. You don’t immediately fire your staff when they make a bad judgment call.
While we understand that this may not be good enough for some users, we hope that they can be understanding that everyone, no matter the position, can make mistakes.
We’ve also added a new by-laws section detailing the course of action users should ideally take, when conflict arises. In the event that a user needs to go above the admin team, we’ve provided a secure link to the operations team (who the admin’s report to, ultimately). See https://legal.lemmy.world/bylaws/#12-site-admin-issues-for-community-moderators for details.
TL;DR In the event of an admin action that is deemed unfair or overstepping, moderators can raise this with our operations team for an appeal/review.
Regarding censorship claims
Regarding the alleged censorship, comments were removed without a proper reason. This was out of line, and we will do our best to make sure that this does not happen again. We have updated our legal policy to reflect the new rules in place that bind both our user AND our moderation staff regarding removing comments and content. We WANT users to hold us accountable to the rules we’ve ALL agreed to follow, going forward. If members of the community find any of the rules we’ve set forth unreasonable, we promise to listen and adjust these rules where we can. Our terms of service is very much a living document, as any proper binding governing document should be.
Controversial topics can and should be discussed, as long as they are not causing risk of imminent physical harm. We are firm believers in the hippocratic oath of “do no harm”.
We encourage users to also list pros and cons regarding controversial viewpoints to foster better discussion. Listing the cons of your viewpoint does not mean you are wrong or at fault, just that you are able to look at the issue from another perspective and aware of potential points of criticism.
While we want to allow our users to express themselves on our platform, we also do not want users to spread mis-information that risks causing direct physical harm to another individual, origination or property owned by the before mentioned. To echo the previous statement “do no harm”.
To this end, we have updated our legal page to make this more clear. We already have provisions for attacking groups, threatening individuals and animal harm, this is a logical extension of this to both protect our users and to protect our staff from legal recourse and make it more clear to everyone. We feel this is a very reasonable compromise, and take these additional very seriously.
Sincerely,
FHF / LemmyWorld Operations Team
EDIT: Added org operations contact info
IDK it seems like pretty clear animal abuse to me
https://www.benevo.com/vegan-cat-food-from-benevo/
We’ve had safe and healthy variants of vegan cat food for 20 years. Trying to elevate the question to animal abuse speaks entirely to personal ignorance.
I appreciate your comments here, even if the people you’re trying to educate completely ignore you and downvote you because they have no response to the fact that vegan cat food exists.
I’m not vegan, but the hysterical ignorance espoused in this comment section is bewildering.
Cats are obligate carnivores. It is 100% animal abuse.
Can we not restart the argument please.
To me, it’s a lot more important in this post to look at the response from mods and admins to a disagreement (and infighting, and mistakes made).
Personally it seems like it was handled well, at least eventually (here). Do you feel one way or the other?
Sometimes I feel like people would like to restart this argument every time it is mentioned, even after 2 threads with hundreds of comments on the topic
People like drama.
Carnivores like to call vegans animal abusers.
*Carnists. Carnivores have no choice in consuming meat. Carnists delibrately choose to do so even when it’s not required.
but if the cat enjoyed the vegan food and the food provided all the nutrients, would you have an issue with it?
Whether a pet gets the food it needs isn’t something you can even have an opinion about. You can have understandings, misunderstandings, or the scientific understanding itself could change. Anything attempting to hone that is fine.
To frame something like that as a disagreement is fundamentally dishonest. The question is what’s nutritionally best for cats. We and our stupid feelings are secondary. I don’t even have any familiarity with the subject myself, I only know it’s not the realm of opinions. Cats need meat or they don’t, in certain amounts, types, at certain intervals, etc.
To be fair, I have a pretty strong opinion on pets getting the food they need. My opinion is that not feeding an animal appropriately is, at best, neglectful.
The great thing is that it’s easy to find out what is an appropriate diet for any pet, clever scientists figured it out and wrote up guidelines for us to follow. Here in the UK for example we would follow the European FEDIAF;
https://europeanpetfood.org/self-regulation/safety
So long as you’re following the guidelines and giving your pet all the nutrients it needs - regardless of how they’re produced (vegan food is fine so long as it replicates the full dietary needs of the animal for example) - you’re good 😊👍
I know it’s silly to have to point that out, I’m not sure why people argued over it (I didn’t see the original discourse). But yes, just to reiterate, it doesn’t matter how you prefer to source the food - vegan, halal, whatever fits your beliefs - just so long as it is a nutritionally complete diet for the animal <3
On the subject of admin/moderation, it is wonderful to see the team trying to be thoughtful, transparent, and kind even in the face of high tempers and heated beliefs. I wish we had more of this calibre of person out in the world :-)
Vegan food is the opposite of replicating the full dietary needs of anything
Oh god, oh fuck, we need to get the word out to these highly educated nutritional scientists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, pulmonologists, oncologists, bariatricians, and nephrologists that “it’s the opposite, actually” as soon as possible. I’ll bet they’ll feel like idiots when they need to retract the dozens of meta-analyses and systemic reviews they’ve meticulously authored both showing that plant-based diets tend to be healthier than omnivorous ones and giving explanations for why.
A lot of these studies are funded by vegan grifters so no yeah no
Oh yeah? Name them. Name the specific one. Every single one of these has a statement on potential conflict of interest and/or how it was funded. Go ahead. Tell me.